A Tale of Two Lodges Between Land and Water

The coast is wild. It is layers of intensities, speeds and latent energies coalesce in the narrow territory between land and water. Ebb and flow, erosion and sedimentation, calm and tempest. It is across these gradients of energy that we experience the coast: the draw of the edge and the necessity of retreat. This migration to and from the sea that has defined life on the Orkney islands condensed in the dual nature of the lodge on the Brough of Birsay.

Birsay Station amplifies the sensible and the latent in the coastal condition. The Inner Lodge is stable and familiar. Warm and solid, the weather outside is viewed through framed views of the sea and the sky. The collective areas are centred around the warm spaces of the mechanical room, kitchen and hearth, with views out to the landscape and the Outer Lodge. The Outer Lodge walks across the layers of the coast, a ghostly familiar which the meteorological and climatic phenomena of the site act on and around. It challenges our confrontation of the remote as sublime by allowing the residents of the lodge to establish and intimacy to the weather and the tides.

While the Inner Lodge is embedded into the landscape, the formal familiarity of the outer lodge to Orkney architecture is weathered by the effects of the edge, rather than standing as heroic architecture against the landscape. Here, intimate to the wild, travelers can convalesce, artists and scientists can explore the landscape, its ecosystems and climate.

On the coast, the duality of the project frames human experience of the coast, crossing the gradient from the most intimate human moments deep inside the inner lodge to the openness and precarious character of the edge.

Site Aerial / The Brough of Birsay is an eastern protrusion of the Orkney islands, looking west across the North sea and the Atlantic. It is here, on the edge, that the energies of land and water start to blur. They are pressing up against each-othe… — **Site Aerial /** The Brough of Birsay is an eastern protrusion of the Orkney islands, looking west across the North sea and the Atlantic. It is here, on the edge, that the energies of land and water start to blur. They are pressing up against each-other, aggregating and eroding, ebb and flow. Siting the lodge on the low side of the island creates an intimate connection to the subtle cycles of the island. The Outer Lodge toes out over the tidal zone, which is a continuously changing landscape. Both lodges are turned into the approach of storm systems and fog banks that regularly pass the island from the east.
Coastlines are always changing face, and BIRSAY STATION seeks to expose some of what is latent in the site. Its presence exposes much of what is missed by the temporary visitors to the site.

Left: Lodge Approaches, Right: Tidal Zone View

Left: the Edge Walk, Right: Accommodations